


All You Get

by DetectiveJoan



Category: Dragonwatch - Brandon Mull, Fablehaven Series - Brandon Mull
Genre: Bleeding Out, Death, Gen, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 19:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveJoan/pseuds/DetectiveJoan
Summary: Kendra dies young.





	All You Get

Kendra dies young. 

“It’s not fair,” she scream-sobs as soon as she knows it’s happening. She wants to stomp her foot like a toddler, but that’s not physically feasible with her injuries. All the months she’s spent on her dignity, playing at acting more mature than she really is, holding back tears and twisting fear into anger so she wouldn’t cry like this in front of enemies who already saw her as insultingly weak, and all for what! She’s sixteen years old and pressing her hands against a gaping abdominal wound to keep her organs inside her, sitting in a growing pool of her own blood. 

Everyone had predicted this. Not the exact scenario, but the general premise of her untimely demise. She’d been forewarned of this inevitability so many times by so many people and creatures alike that she’d come to feel immune to it; she’d lost her fear. The constant predictions themselves had become a twisted kind of shield in her mind, as though her fate would be forced to subvert something so obvious.

But that’s not how life works. She doesn’t get narrative protection, she just gets this: the expected ripping of dragon teeth through her torso. Her chest is screaming with the pain of snapped ribs, and her vision is blurred both by tears and blood loss, and she can’t feel anything below her waist. 

The real kicker of it all is that she’s going to die alone. No Warren or Bracken or even Seth by her side. No one to hear her final words or offer her false promises about everything being alright. 

Is there even going to be a body for them to find? Or will Celebrant swallow her corpse down like so much livestock? Maybe she’ll be left to rot until her bones are all that are left; maybe they’ll have enough fairy magic left in them to be identifiable. 

There’s blood in her mouth. She can’t taste it, but the slimy-thick texture of it clogs her throat, moistening her last breaths. 

Death isn’t unfamiliar to her, as a general concept. She’s seen plenty of it since she first looked down at her grandparents’ stingbulb corpses in their open caskets. She knows how fast it can be, how a life can be cut down in a single moment. Still, she thought she’d have more time than this. 

It’s not fair, she thinks again, but her head is swimming now and she can’t get her lips to form the words. 

It’s not fair. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm DetectiveJoan and I occasionally have extremely intense emotions about this child over on [tumblr](http://detectivejoan.tumblr.com/)


End file.
